PURGATORIO, Episode 234. When You Don't Get The Redemption You Want: PURGATORIO, Canto XXX, Lines 100 - 126

What happens when you don’t get the redemption you want?

Or perhaps don’t get the Beatrice you want. Because she’s now fully in charge . . . so much so that she can even tell the angels in the chariot with her what they can't understand.

She launches into her first indictment of the pilgrim, Dante. Here, she claims that he hasn't fulfilled his talent.

He hasn't? With so much of COMEDY behind us?

And what if then the point of this journey? Is it poetic craft or personal redemption?

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The segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:

[01:41] My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXX, Lines 100 - 126. If you'd like to read along or continue the conversation with me, please scroll down this page.

[04:23] What can the angels in the chariot not know?

[08:13] What germinates from heaven, far above the seeds that blow out of the Garden of Eden?

[11:15] What was Dante supposed to have done?

[15:19] What good was this journey across the known universe?

[18:40] How do you stay open to the grace you get but perhaps don't expect?

[20:02] Rereading the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto XXX, lines 100 - 126.

My English translation of PURGATORIO, Canto XXX, Lines 100 – 126:

Still standing motionless on the aforesaid side

Of the chariot, she turned her words

To those pitying substances [and said] like this:

“You are watching from the eternal days,

So that [neither] night nor sleep can take away

Any step the world may make on its path.

“That’s why I make my reply with more curative power

So that the one who is weeping over there understands me,

In order that his guilt and his grief have equal measure.

“Not only through the operations of the great wheels

That direct every seed to its allotted end,

According to the companionship of the stars,

“But because of the largesse of divine graces,

Which rain down from such high vapors

That our sight cannot get close enough to understand them,

“That one was in such a way in his youthful life,

Ostensibly so that every good habit

Could produce a marvel in him.

“But all the more evil and more wild

Becomes the earth without good seed or cultivation,

Yet the more good earthly vigor it still has in it.

“For a while I sustained him with my face.

By showing him my youthful eyes,

I drew him on, turned in the proper direction.

“When I got to the threshold of my second state

And changed lives, that one

Took himself away from me and gave himself to another. . . .”